A small Boy sits in his sandbox. Quietly a little Girl joins him. She waits and watches in silence. The sun shines. They have a pail of water to use to mix the mud for their kingdom. For lunch they have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sliced diagonally across. They have two chocolate chip cookies.
Their little yellow shovel has a purpose, to dig the moat to protect the castle. But it seems unnecessary because the castle and sand lands surrounding it are inhabited only by friendly ants and lady bugs. There was peace in the land, his land. The newly-painted red rim of the weathered wooden sandbox guaranteed their safety. It is calm. It is charmed.
“I want you to live here with me for our whole lives,” said the little Boy. “We will never leave our corner of the garden unless we go to the kitchen to ask your mom for another sandwich. “Someday my mommy will teach me to make sandwiches for us,” said the little Girl. The little boy affirmed his plans for the future. “Growing up and growing old together, watching the grass grow.” “Well, maybe we could go visiting and have visitors come to see us once in a while, “ suggested the Girl. “Why? Well, maybe, we’ll, I guess, we’ll, gee, we’ll, I don’t know.” With that he wiped her suggestion from his thoughts.
The day went beautifully as he made rows, planting blades of grass. She mixed sand and water into delicate-looking tea cakes and then asked him for some clovers and a bottle cap to create a centerpiece for their table. But sadly they didn’t have a tea table and even sadder still he was so preoccupied with a new way of arranging his rows of grass that it was difficult for her to get his attention. She would wait, he’d be hungry soon and need one of the tea cakes or better still, half of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she had brought from the kitchen.
Why was it always this way, she thought, “Waiting, waiting, waiting, for him to finish with his preoccupation before he pays any attention to me.” She tried to be perky and full of bright conversation all the time. “ Did you know the lady bugs are multiplying?” “Have you seen the birds in the mulberry bush?” “Do my shoes match my dress quite right?” “Will it rain today?” “Do you like when I sing as I sweep the stray sand from the castle door?”
He never answered, only continued devising ways to plant grass that she knew would never take root, never grow.
The day went by and the next and then the next. He was satisfied, which for a boy was the best to expect, but she was unsettled. She could only make so many inedible tea cakes in a day. There was absolutely nothing to talk about now except the proportion of water to sand in her cakes. When she was lucky he’d tell her about the number of blades of grass he could plant in a straight line in a day. She didn’t know how or why but he’d wax poetic about their growth. She had to admit the way the sun struck the edges of the blades and the coming of a slight breeze wafting over the rows had a lovely quality, but to liken it to poetry might make his childhood odes objects of scorn.
What were they doing day in and day out in the sandbox? She was questioning the life they had chosen. He, on the other hand, rhapsodized how lucky they were to have each other and their shared interests. Life, the sandbox and the blades of grass would be perfect, forever.
Hearing his delight in this never-ending condition, she measured out the water, added it to the sand, set the cakes out to dry, gathered her shovel and pail, jumped over the red rim and out of the box, gentled through the garden gate, past her mother slicing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the diagonal, gleefully down the path, intently crossing the road, singing her sweeping song, but only to herself. Finding her destiny. Never to be seen again.
Charlene James-Duguid
Amissville,Virginia
Ursula, proud to be
The sad little wren.
